The meetings chaired by Mayawati would be held on 18th of every month to remind her voters of her resignation from Parliament on the eighteenth day of July, 2017.

The Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) chief Mayawati waves to her supporters during an election campaign rally on the death anniversary of Kanshi Ram, founder of BSP, in Lucknow, India, October 9, 2016. (REUTERS/Pawan Kumar)

New Delhi: After her resignation from Parliament last week, BSP Chief Mayawati has decided to hit the road. Every month, starting this September, BSP will hold review meetings in each division of Uttar Pradesh. The meetings chaired by BSP President would be held on 18th of every month to remind her voters of her resignation from Parliament on the eighteenth day of July, 2017.

The party will start this organisational churning from its stronghold in western UP. A joint convention of Meerut and Saharanpur Mandal is being planned for 18th September at Meerut.

Revival plan was announced by Mayawati after a closed door interaction with her party MLAs, MPs and senior office bearers at BSP headquarters in Delhi.

“BJP has become a casteist, communal and capitalist party, and it does not respect the Constitution,” BSP President said after the meeting.

Mayawati had stormed out of the Rajya Sabha last week, on the first day of the Monsoon session, accusing the treasury benches of gagging her when she wanted to speak on Dalit atrocities. She thereafter tendered her resignation from the Upper House. Her six year Rajya Sabha term was to end in April next year.

Since losing power to Samajwadi Party in 2012, BSP has seen a steady erosion of its presence in UP legislative Assembly and Parliament. Its vote share has also dwindled to 20% in the Assembly polls held earlier this year even as BJP has moved in to make a concerted effort to win over BSP’s traditional vote base.

Political analyst Vivek Kumar, from Sociology Department at Jawaharlal Nehru University, says, “Mayawati has not lost connect with her people. She had actually not taken stock of the structure of the organization. She was relying too much on the representatives or the co-coordinators. One by one, all of them have left her. Now, she herself wants to go back to the people.”

All her trusted aides in the last five years have joined the BJP. From Jugal Kishore of Lakhimpur Kheri to Brajesh Pathak and Swami Prasad Maurya. Pathak and Maurya are now ministers in the BJP government in UP.

In her attempt to recast and rejuvenate the cadre based party, BSP President plans to follow these division level programmes by similar conventions and stock taking at the Vidhan Sabha level.